


inter

by Anonymous



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon Compliant, Destroy Ending (Mass Effect), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29385477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "we’ll find her,"someone says."we’ll bring her back. we’ll give her a proper burial, and –"and garrus never understood the human obsession with burials.
Relationships: Female Shepard & Garrus Vakarian, Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Anonymous





	inter

**ix.**  
You never cared much for human time.

 _It’s been a solar year_ , they tell you. _Don’t get your hopes up_.

But it was two years last time, wasn’t it?

You see the dark carcass of the Citadel,

 _We’ll find her_ , someone says.

You land on a twisted inner-ring strut,

_We’ll bring her back._

You sift through the crush and shatter,

_We’ll give her a proper burial, and –_

**ii.**  
You’ve been to human funerals before. This is the first one without a body.

You understand this kind of funeral. Turians don’t need a body. For consolation, turn to the spirits. For remembrance, turn to the historians.

You _think_ you understand, until you see the casket and shroud.

You turn to Shepard. _Why a casket?_ You ask her. _How did they find the body on Virmire?_

Later, you will understand her expression.

For now, you think human faces are strange, the way they crumple.

**vi.**  
You ask again while she’s poised on the bed like a spiral galaxy.

 _It’s closure,_ she says. _There’s a sense of finality. Once you give up hope, you can start to… accept._

_It’s relief, I guess._

Truth be told, you still don’t understand, but when you turn down to speak –

She’s looking at you, but seeing something else –

So you say nothing, just hum, and curl into her halo instead.

**viii.**  
You miss your own funeral.

It was a human funeral, they tell you, for you and the rest of her crew. A grand affair, worthy of the saviors of the galaxy.

 _She must have had a laugh at that,_ you quip.

And _you_ laugh, because you are floating higher than Menae on the sedative and nutriment sluicing through your starved veins, and no one has the heart to tell you otherwise.

 _No,_ you laugh again. _She was never one for fancy ceremonies._

Not your Shepard.

**iii.**  
You knew that humans go back for the body, but you could never fathom why.

Then she dies, and there _is_ no body, and everything she died for, the Council denies.

You’ve been to human funerals before.

They have a casket for her, but you can’t ask her why.

**v.**  
You learn from your mistakes.

 _EDI,_ you once asked, _can you keep a record?_

This way, someone will remember. Maybe someone else will understand.

**vii.**  
You never get the chance to ask about those records again. Rather, you never take the chance.

You mean to, when the mission is over. But the mission is never over, and then a life ceases to exist between a flash of light and a loll of a head.

You never knew spirits to die.

**iv.**  
You dream of her, sometimes. You see her, sometimes, when you overdose on stims and dreams flicker fuse into sight.

Between little deaths, you chase ghosts with concussive shots, but then they’re glancing off shields instead of sheetmetal, and you realize, with a tarnishing laugh – the persistence of vision never had much on Shepard.

**i.**  
Your kind doesn’t go back for the body. Go back, and, once the dust settles, there lie two slain instead of one. It’s better, turians believe, for there to be just one.

Humans believe differently, the turians realize upon first contact. They cannot fathom why, but no one questions what they can use to their unerring advantage. Questions can wait until the battle is won.

The dust settles.

Bodies lie slain on either side. More than one, more than two, too many to count.

No one remembered to ask.

**x.**  
And you’ve never understood the human obsession with burials.

There is no relief.


End file.
